


None of Them Hold Your Face

by Jester85



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV Arthur, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-09 21:11:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5555489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jester85/pseuds/Jester85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur engages in meaningless hook-ups post a break-up with Eames.  Ariadne wants details.</p><p>Edit and expansion of a previously posted work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	None of Them Hold Your Face

 

 

It's New Year's, and Arthur is getting laid in Paris.

It sounds very glamorous and romantic, but it's actually none of the former and even less of the latter, pounding into a guy as different from  _ ~~Eames~~ Him _ as possible  ~~not that that's relevant~~ , thrusting in a steady, driving rhythm with the guy's ankles flung up onto his shoulders.

He doesn't care about seeing his face---the guy wouldn't be in his bed if he wasn't at least decent-looking, but he's nothing special, a skinny twink with artfully disheveled high-piled hair who looks like he could be Andrew Garfield's stunt double---and honestly he doesn't really care that much if the guy comes or not, but if he does, it's not going to be on his bedsheets.

Arthur almost huffs out a bitter laugh.  In a way, it's comforting to know that, while drunk half out of his mind on cheap bourbon from a dive in Le Marais he normally wouldn't have been caught dead in, he still has his priorities.

 _"Oui"_ , Gaspard (yes, he does at least know the name of the man he's fucking) gasps out in a breathy moan, so overly emphatic that Arthur has to think about blowing away projections in zero-g to keep a neutral expression.  " _Mon_ _Amerique, ne vous arrêtez pas...."_

 _  
"Arrêter de parler", _ Arthur grunts out, his voice sounding strangled to his own ears and his blood rushing in his head.  This feels like a chore, like a mission he's completing, fucking himself into oblivion as much as Gaspard.  It sounds all wrong.  Every noise out of him is wrong, when Arthur's ears instinctively strain for----

 

 

_\---a deep, low moan, a dirty chuckle in his ear as plump lips tickle his lobe, a "So good for me, darling," sliding into his mind in an obscenely sensual English purr._

_Arthur lolls his head into the silk pillows, the sinfully crisp French linen rubbing against his hard cock in an agonizingly slow burn as Eames licks a trail of fire down his naked back, down between his cheeks, and finally sliding down to taste him there, the place that makes him gasp and arch his back._

_Any other man, or woman for that matter, he would never surrender control like this, never let them (even if they were capable of it, which he finds highly dubious) reduce him to this wanton, writhing creature, letting Eames take him apart piece by piece..._

 

...but isn't that why he took Gaspard back to his hotel room in the first place?  Didn't he take one step inside the bar, gliding smoothly around the shirtless cabana boys, feeling their eyes roaming with interest over the sharp cut of his suit and the boyishness of his face, honing in on the most un-Eamesian guy at the bar like he was doing recon on a mark?

 _Fuck._ So he's really been reduced to this, can't even fuck without comparing them to Eames.  He'll be lucky if he even gets off.

 

 

_"Don't come yet, darling," Eames drawls in a maddeningly nonchalant tone, even as he's driving hard into Arthur, hauling his legs up onto his broad shoulders and letting his hips roll, fucking into him with such force that Arthur's head nearly falls off the bed, leaving Arthur clutching at anything, fingers tangling in sheets, scrabbling for purchase, struggling to find some semblance of control._

_It's useless.  Eames has a power over him that no one else has ever possessed._

_"Love seeing you like this," Eames continues in his conversational tone, as if they're sitting drinking Earl Grey on the balcony of Arthur's Tuscan villa, the one he'd never told a living soul about, but which Eames had taken it upon himself to sniff out with only mildly alarming ease.  "I'm the only one who gets to see it, aren't I?  My Arthur."_

_"Less talking," Arthur grits out through clenched teeth, "More--", but then his words are lost as Eames shifts his angle and finds that perfect spot that makes him cry out so loudly he'd be embarrassed if he had any sense of reality right now._

_"More, Darling?" Eames purrs from somewhere above him.  A large calloused hand wraps itself around Arthur's cock, and there's white between his eyes, and he knows nothing else._

 

 

Arthur grunts when he comes and feels a mix of relief and self-disgust.  His hair stayed in place the whole time.

 

 

_Plump lips roam over Arthur's overstimulated body, nipping gently at a tweaked brown nipple, murmuring nonsense into his sweat-slick neck.  Gentle now, a soothing caress, putting out the fire that mouth had blazed across his eager flesh minutes beforehand._

_Arthur feels the light from the window on his face.  Feeling sated, loose-limbed, splayed akimbo with the utter lack of dignity he only allowed himself around Eames, he felt the soft smile on his own face.  A smile his colleagues wouldn't have thought him capable of.  A smile he saved only for Eames._

 

_"C'mere," he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss into the Englishman's damp hair.  Eames allows Arthur to wrap his bulk up in his arms, breathing into his neck, and Arthur runs his flat palm up and down the broad back, fingers idly tracing the sprawl of tattooes, and listens to the muted hum of traffic outside._

 

 

 

The tendrils of smoke curl slowly toward the ceiling of the Paris hotel room as Arthur indulges himself with a slow drag on a cigarette--completing a job or completing a fuck being the only occasions he permits it--and irritably fends off Gaspard's attempts to cuddle.  If he'd been in the mood for post-coital clinging, he'd have pulled a girl.

Gaspard tries to kiss him goodbye at the door.  Arthur dodges it and tells him good night as curtly as if he were concluding a business meeting with a client.  He thinks he's conducted business meetings with more emotion.

After the door closes with a soft click and a post-it-note next to the used bottle of lube and crumpled tissues on the nightstand, a number hastily scribbled that he has no intention of using, Arthur smells the boy's arousal on his fingers and gets up for a shower. Quick but thorough, efficient, as vaguely mechanical as the fucking had been.

 

He wipes his palm across the mirror and observes the reflection staring back at him.  

He's the goddamned Point Man, the best in the dreamsharing community.  He kept his cool while battling militarized projections in zero-g and then dropping his teammates---including the infuriating bastard who's reduced him to this pathetic shell of a man---down an elevator shaft with no gravity. 

He can handle this.

He does not miss Eames.

Maybe if he says it enough times, it'll start to be true.

Is it possible to incept oneself?

 

 

"Admit it, you miss Eames," Ariadne chirps out, as casual as a comment on the weather, around a bite of her crepes.

Arthur's answering scowl which has struck fear into men far larger and older than himself, has no effect on the tiny student across from him at the cafe table except a dubiously raised eyebrow and expression of pointed disbelief.

"Are you _actually_ trying to say you don't?  Arthur, you've been miserable since London..."

"I have not been 'miserable'," he bites out, cringing inwardly at how defensive his own usually carefully neutral voice sounds.

The Eyebrow of Dubiousness raised still higher.  "When's the last time you got laid?"

Arthur allows himself a trace of a smirk.  "Last night, actually," he takes some satisfaction in saying.

The crepes hit the table with a clink and Ariadne is all eager interest, leaning forward like she's devouring one of his lessons about paradoxical architecture.  

Arthur isn't sure precisely when their work relationship blurred into a sort of big brother/little sister dynamic.

"Details.  Come on.  Spill."

"A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell," Arthur offers as token resistance.

"Uh-huh, and how about fuck and tell?" Ariadne shoots back.  "At least tell me, man, woman?"  


"Man," Arthur reluctantly shares, "And no, he was nothing like Eames."

"Ew," Ariadne winces in sympathy.  "Was he, uh...." a vague flutter of her hand in a downward motion has Arthur furrowing his brow at her in confusion before she shrugs awkwardly.  "Not, uh, endowed?"

Arthur feels his cheeks blush even as he realizes he can barely remember what Gaspard looked like, let alone how big his dick was.

"I, uh, I don't know.  I didn't really pay attention to his dick."

Ariadne cocked her head like a small bird.  "But I thought you....um..."  
  
"Only with Eames," Arthur stated entirely too firmly.

Ariadne's inquisitive gaze softened into a look of pity, and Arthur suppressed a sigh.  "Arthur.  Eames is in Mombasa, not on Mars."

"I know where he is," Arthur confirms.  The pattern on the tablecloth is suddenly very interesting.

Ariadne reaches across the space and lays her hand over his.  His skin tingles with the unexpected contact, but he doesn't pull away.  

"Because he lets you know.  Because he lets us know."  


Arthur feels his face burning.  "Eames is a professional.  He lets us know as a courtesy."

Ariadne withdraws her hand with a sharp sigh of exasperation.  "Oh, Arthur.  He lets  _you_ know in case you decide you're tired of having boring sex in Paris hotel rooms and would rather have mind-blowing earth-shattering lovemaking in a Mombasa apartment."

At Arthur's scandalized expression, she rolled her eyes skyward and muttered, "What?  We've shared a wall, Arthur.  I'm not deaf."

 

 __

 

The phone ringing in Arthur's ear felt more ominous than the distorted tones of "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" echoing eerily through a disintegrating dreamscape.

_Two times, three..._

Maybe Eames had switched numbers.  Maybe he really didn't want to hear from Arthur.

_Four..._

Maybe Arthur should hang up and forget ever dialing the forger's number.  Maybe he could fish Gaspard's number and apartment out of the hotel room wastebasket and hit him up for another round of unsatisfying robotic fucking where one of them had to think about somebody else to get off...it worked for plenty of lifelong marriages, didn't it?

_Five..._

No, not Gaspard.  Maybe he'd pull a woman next time, someone soft and feminine and even more different from...

_"Darling."_

Eames.

And suddenly Arthur couldn't remember what he'd been thinking of a second before that sinful purr ghosted across his ear.

"Eames."

" _The one and only."_

Arthur's throat bobbed convulsively.  One and only.  

He licked his lips.

"Yea."

 __

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yea....I don't even know what this is. Arthur is....not that nice in this, but he's also depressed, so....


End file.
